So the most visible job in local sport has gone to Clay Smith. The Bermuda Cricket Board got its man after what was claimed to be “an extensive and rigorous” interview process — the lengths a son of the soil has to go to prove his worth despite the results of his craft having been laid bare for all to see for much of the past decade.

But these are not normal times for Bermuda cricket — they are desperate times, really — and the challenge for Smith as Bermuda head coach is significant; perhaps more so than he is willing or equipped to acknowledge.

For not only is he charged with returning Bermuda to a more appropriate standing within the World Cricket League, he also has to rescue the national sport from moribund status in the eyes of people at home — those who remain disgusted by two episodes that blighted the summer gone, with players under his care at Cleveland County Cricket Club chiefly responsible, as well as a litany of other missteps that have left the impression that this generation of “cricketers” are more trouble than they are worth.

Caught up in that bunch are those with genuine prospects, including youth players deemed good enough to get into senior teams at club level and those who are playing overseas, the sort on whom Smith should focus his attention.

But the rest? The type who play because it is summertime? Those are the ones he has to weed out at national level if indeed he is going to orchestrate the change that those who love cricket, Bermuda cricket in particular, want and deserve to see.

Is he prepared to do that? Or does he have such one-eyed belief that his popularity is so encompassing that, suddenly, all those who prefer recreational drugs to the drug-free life of international sportsmen, those who prefer association with an antisocial or gang lifestyle to choosing acquaintances wisely, those who prefer nights out before matches in 85F heat to quiet nights in, those who miss training because they were “at work” and those who refuse to play under Janeiro Tucker as captain will buy into his philosophy and come on board?

If Smith truly is the visionary that the BCB advertised for, he should be able to see through the nonsense and, with pride put to one side, be strong enough to dispense with the troublemakers, however talented they may be. For a leopard will never change its spots; it can cover them for a while, but the spots will eventually come through and plant the seeds of dissension.

To say that Smith is passionate about the game while others among the applicants are not is a nonsense. There is no way to quantify passion, other than to observe a steadfast commitment to excellence; it cannot be determined by seeing who shouts the loudest or longest, or by who throws his toys farthest out of the pram.

We have had many loud and rude types in our cricketing past who were incorrectly said to have possessed passion. “Look how much they want to win. You can see it by how much he trashed the dressing room and by how far he put his foot through the hotel room door.” No, they were simply loud and rude. We need fewer of those whom you cannot trust when put under pressure and more of the knowledgeable types who can apply reason to their craft.

A social shift has resulted whereby the loud and rude types who once were a small minority in the past are now an unhealthy majority, to the extent that it can be argued that the fools are running the asylum, such are the rampant abuses of the spirit of the game.

Smith’s job is to arrest that, but it is informative that as a player he could be said to have been caught between two stools: most definitely in the “loud and rude” fraternity but also with a leaning to being among the proper thinkers of the game. Not only must he now divorce himself from a petulant past, but he must set the example that he would want players to follow — at home and abroad.

That said, his love of the game is undeniable and this is a job that he has coveted since knee problems, brought on by a prolonged and stubborn insistence in his mid-twenties that having a good left foot made him a two-sport star as a footballer, cut short his career as an international cricketer. In between, he is to be forgiven an ill-fated run for the BCB presidency — the result of acting on poor advice and/or allowing his ego to ignore the sage few who would have disabused him of such a kneejerk notion.

A president of an organisation he most definitely is not, but he can coach and he can inspire. Even though he has not got it all right at Cleveland, with a nod towards their recent disciplinary record, little else can explain the metamorphosis that has enveloped that group the past two seasons.

A byword for failure for much of the Eighties and Nineties, and also, incidentally, the team that Smith arguably had most of his individual success against, Cleveland have been a club reborn and that has rubbed off on the Harris Bay community, one of the proudest on the Island. Much of the change can be put down to Smith.

Which brings us to his “part-time” role because he expects fully to continue in his position at Cleveland while also running the rule over every other Bermuda-eligible player on the Island. It is almost like the Cup Match clubs scouting players while watching only matches in which St George’s or Somerset are involved. (Oops, that happens now, save for the Eastern Counties Cup.)

Perhaps he will lean on his support network in the coaching set-up, which includes, officially at least, two of three candidates for the head coach position that he beat out. You have to wonder how much more the demoted Arnold Manders has to give, while Lorenzo Tucker, qualified though he is, was always going to suffer for not having been a player of note, let alone of international standard.

For, while in top-flight football it is possible to land a key appointment and excel without ever having “walked the walk” as a player — think Arsène Wenger, Joachim Löw, Rafael Benítez or José Mourinho, but not the 2015-16 vintage (sorry, Chelsea fans) — in cricket it is a rarity for a coach not to have played at international level; it is almost a prerequisite. So Tucker, who is well spoken of in local circles, for now will be left only to “talk the talk” as an analyst at senior national team level.

What that means for Herbie Bascome, the remaining candidate but the only one left out of the loop, is unclear. However, he and Smith get on well, so it would be no surprise were he to resurface in some capacity.

Some would have preferred the search to spread farther afield. And with the number of black eyes administered to domestic cricket this summer — Eastern Counties Cup first round, Cup Match, match abandoned by off-field brawl, match forfeited when team railed against captain’s decision to field first, Champion of Champions final, etc, etc, all featuring players given “a clean slate” by the new man — the BCB would have been within its rights to have gone to Specsavers or, more seriously, to have scoured the international circuit for another Gus Logie.

It turned to Clay Smith instead. We wish him luck. He will need it.